Moments ago, the Office engineering team signed off on the Release to Manufacturing (RTM) build. This milestone means the coding and testing phase of the project is complete and we are now focused on releasing the new Office via multiple distribution channels to our consumer and business customers.

This is the most ambitious release of Office we've ever done. It spans the full family of Office applications, servers and cloud services. The new Office has a fresh, touch friendly design that works beautifully on Windows 8 and unlocks modern scenarios in social, reading, note-taking, meetings and communications. We are proud to achieve this milestone and are eager to deliver this exciting release to our customers.

General availability is planned for the first quarter of 2013. Starting October 19, customers purchasing Office 2010 from local retailers or resellers will receive the new Office for free upon availability. Customers will also see a preview version of the new Office on Windows RT devices, beginning with the Windows 8 launch on October 26.

Additionally, we have a number of programs that provide business customers with early access so they can begin testing, piloting and adopting Office within their organizations:

We will begin rolling out new capabilities to Office 365 Enterprise customers in our next service update, starting in November through general availability.

Volume Licensing customers with Software Assurance will be able to download the Office 2013 applications as well as other Office products including SharePoint 2013, Lync 2013 and Exchange 2013 through the Volume Licensing Service Center by mid-November. These products will be available on the Volume Licensing price list on December 1.

IT professionals and developers will be able to download the final version via their TechNet or MSDN subscriptions by mid-November.

Pre-register today and get notified when SharePoint 2010 Beta becomes available in November. ​

Find out how this integrated suite of server capabilities can help your
organization by providing comprehensive content management and enterprise
search, accelerating shared business processes, and facilitating
information-sharing across boundaries for better business insight.

The Microsoft SharePoint Administration Toolkit contains functionality to help manage Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services version 3.0. This toolkit contains the ability to perform bulk operations on site collections, an Stsadm operation to update alert e-mails after the URL for a Web application has been changed, and a User Profile Replication Engine tool. For new functionality, see New Features. New Features:

The MSI is customizable and selectable, meaning that a user can control which tools are installed or uninstalled and when the User Profile Replication Engine tool is installed, a custom installation folder can be selected. The MSI also supports the /quiet switch for quiet installation.

For x86 and x64 platforms, installation is automatic. There is no need to manually run Psconfig and Stsadm commands after running Setup, as with the April 2008 release.

See the following documentation on TechNet regarding use of the toolkit:

Download the MicrosoftSharepointAdministrationToolkit.exe file by clicking the Download button, and then save the file to your hard disk.

Double-click the MicrosoftSharepointAdministrationToolkit.exe program file on your hard disk to start the Setup program.

After the License Terms for Microsoft Agreement is accepted, click Next.

Select which tool or tools are to be installed by choosing the appropriate icon and select the top-level feature ("This feature will be installed on local hard drive").

If the Batch Site Manager is being installed, the following warning message is displayed: "The following services may have to be started or reset during Batch Site Manager installation: Internet Information Services, SharePoint Administration Service, and SharePoint Timer Service". Choose Yes to restart the services if required and continue with Setup or No to exit Setup.

If Replication Engine is being installed, the default folder location is %Program Files%\Microsoft\Replication Engine. Click Browse to change the location of this folder. After a location is selected, click OK, and then click Next.

If the Batch Site Manager is being installed, a VBScript is called and runs PSConfig and Stsadm commands before Setup is finished. This process does take several seconds to complete. If the commands do not execute properly, the following error message is displayed:"Failed to register Batch Site Manager". Note: Any failed error that occurs during installation will cause Setup to exit. If you do receive an error message, you can manually install the Batch Site Manager tool by manually typing the following two commands (without quotations):

Uninstall the Microsoft SharePoint Administration Toolkit from Add or Remove Programs (Windows Server 2003) or Programs and Features (Windows Server 2008) in Control Panel.

Please note that the file ESCM.resx must be manually removed from your machine. This file is located at:%SystemDrive%\Inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\%Central Admin Web Application Folder%\App_GlobalResources\ESCM.resx. Reinstallation will not replace the old file.

To uninstall version 2.0 of the SharePoint Administration Toolkit:. To uninstall a tool or tools from the SharePoint Administration Toolkit, follow these steps:

From Add or Remove Programs, or Programs and Features click Change to remove the Administration Toolkit for Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies. Note: The same dialog box is displayed if you run the MicrosoftSharepointAdministrationToolkit.exe file instead of using Add or Remove Programs or Programs and Features.

If you plan to remove the Batch Site Manager tool, you will receive the following message: "This will only remove related files from this machine. Do you want to remove the Batch Site Manager link from Central Administration as well?" If you choose No the Batch Site Manager tool still available should you have it installed on another computer. However, if you choose Yes, the Batch Site Manager files are completely removed from the farm.

Customers using Microsoft's SharePoint enterprise portal can now get deployment help if they subscribe to the Software Assurance program.

SharePoint Deployment Planning Services is modeled after a desktop planning service that the Microsoft Office team offers, said Kathleen Timiney, director, SharePoint Partners at Microsoft. The company has been conducting a pilot of the program but is launching its worldwide availability now.

Enterprises that take advantage of the service will get deployment planning help, mainly through third-party companies. Microsoft is offering training and certification for its partners and will help match up customers with the trained third-party consultants. Microsoft pays the third-party partners for their work.

Customers who buy into the Software Assurance maintenance offering get phone support, training and IT tools that help with deployment and management of their software.

SharePoint is the fastest growing server product in Microsoft's history, according to company Chairman Bill Gates, who spoke earlier this year at the annual SharePoint conference. Microsoft expects to have sold 100 million licenses in its year ending in July, he said.

When Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates takes the stage to deliver the keynote address at the annual 2008 Microsoft SharePoint Conference here March 3, he will announce the availability of both Search Server 2008 Express and the Silverlight Blueprint for SharePoint.

Search Server 2008 Express, the free, downloadable enterprise search product announced in November, is relatively simple to install and easy to use, and brings a powerful set of search features, including new capabilities to help businesses connect to a wide range of information, a Microsoft spokesperson told eWEEK ahead of the conference.

Silverlight Blueprint for SharePoint jumpstarts the effort to combine the interactivity of Silverlight with the next-generation Web application development platform of SharePoint. It includes sample applications that combine Silverlight and SharePoint, detailed guidance and proven best practices, and new rich business data visualizations and interactivity.

Gates will also tell the audience that more than 100 million SharePoint licenses have been sold, taking sales revenue beyond the billion-dollar mark, largely due to the collaboration and information management capabilities it delivers, and that this is just the beginning of SharePoint’s success, the spokesperson said.

There are currently some 2,250 certified SharePoint partners, with more than 17,000 businesses using the product to collaborate with team members, search and create social networks for experts and corporate information, manage content and workflow, and leverage business insight to make better-informed decisions.

Monday from the annual Microsoft Office SharePoint Conference, Bill
Gates, chairman of Microsoft Corp., will announce that the company will
offer Microsoft Online Services to businesses of all sizes. This
announcement marks a significant step for Microsoft toward expanding
its software plus services strategy.

“The combination of software
plus services gives customers advanced choice and flexibility in how
they access and manage software,” Gates said. “With Microsoft Online
Services, businesses can deploy software as a subscription service,
from servers they manage on-site, or a combination of the two,
depending on their specific needs. In the future, customers and
partners should expect to see this kind of choice and flexibility for
all of Microsoft’s software and server products.”

Today Microsoft also opened a limited beta trial of the new services; U.S.-based companies can register for the trial at http://www.mosbeta.com. The new services are scheduled to be generally available to businesses of all sizes in the second half of the year.

Based
on the proven, business-class software available in Microsoft Exchange
Server 2007 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, the new
services enable businesses to access e-mail, calendaring, contacts,
shared workspaces, and webconferencing and videoconferencing over the
Web. The new services are managed through a single Web-based interface,
designed to meet the needs of IT professionals. Through this
security-enhanced interface, IT professionals can monitor the
performance of the services, add and configure users, submit and track
support requests, and manage users and licenses...................

We're working on releasing a similar "slipstream" version of
SharePoint Server SP1 which will include both the full version of WSS
the WSS SP1 patch, SharePoint Server 2007 full version including
the SP1. The installation will automatically include the service
pack. In the mean time I recommend you look at Ben Curry's (SharePoint
MVP) post on installing SharePoint Server 2007 on RC1
(instructions include how to put SP1 in the update). You'll hear about
the download here when it's available. Martin Kearn has some similar instructions for including the WSS SP1 and MOSS SP1 when installing on Windows Server 2008.
Note, when installing SharePoint Server 2007 on Windows Server 2008 it
does require both WSS SP1 and MOSS SP1 be included when you install.

Upgrading from Windows Server 2003 to Windows Server 2008

After release you'll see more instructions on this topic on
TechNet. We don't recommend you upgrade production environments until
after the Windows Server 2008 release. We announced that this
release was the last 32-bit version of SharePoint Products and
Technologies at Tech Ed IT Forum 2007. I was exited to hear Steve
Smith (SharePoint MVP) and Penny Coventry (SharePoint MVP) both of Combined Knowledge, have just released a paper on How to move a SharePoint Server 2007 32-bit environment to a 64-bit environment on Windows Server 2008. What a great document to get familiar with and to start including this in your plans.

SharePoint will have a booth at the Windows Server 2008 launch event
in Los Angeles. We'll have copies of the new SharePoint Deployment
Essentials guides. We hope to see you there.

If you're trying to find more resources on Windows Server 2008, I recommend reading up...

The SQL 2008 team and the SharePoint Team are working together to
make both products better and to ensure a better together experience.
We currently plan to support SQL 2008 at its release. Expect to hear
more about this as well. We don't recommend running production
SharePoint environments on SQL 2008 with pre-release (CTP) builds.

After several months of work and very little sleep in between we are pleased to announce general availability of the SharePoint Capacity Planning Tool (Beta).

The SharePoint Capacity Planning Tool (Beta) provides a wealth of helpful information when planning a SharePoint Products and Technologies deployment; helping administrators, consultants, and IT Pros determine the potential required hardware investment(s) and topologies to support and meet requirements for availability and performance or even the affect of introducing additonal offices with their own unique bandwidth and latency constraints.

Using the SharePoint Capacity Planning Tool (Beta) you can build topology models, run simulations, and generate reports that will help you evaluate and identify alternative solutions considering profile-based usage variations, content size and scope, networking technology, and availability requirements.

Anticipation and excitement around Service Pack 1 for WSS 3.0 and Office SharePoint Server 2007 has been building, and I'm excited to share some information on the upcoming service packs. There are truly gifts for everyone in Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) 3.0 SP1 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 SP1. From developers getting excited about AJAX support and compatibility to IT Pro's being excited about the new STSADM commands allowing them to repartition their databases not to mention the new performance, manageability, and security enhancements in Windows Server 2008 and IIS 7. (Which easily promises to be best server OS release ever.) Even information workers are well served with over 60 hotfixes across the SharePoint Products and Technologies addressing issues related to workflows, alerts, and list views.

Windows Server 2008 Support and Compatibility

All of the Windows Server 2008 editions except core will be compatible with WSS 3.0 SP1 and SharePoint Server SP1 at RC1 and beyond. New slipstream download version of WSS 3.0 and Office SharePoint Server will include SP1

ASP.NET for AJAX Compatibility and Support Including Support for Web Parts Built with AJAX Control Toolkit for ASP.NET and AJAX 1.0 Extensions (KB941955)

You can now use the Microsoft AJAX 1.0 Control toolkit for Microsoft ASP.NET or the AJAX 1.0 Extensions for ASP.NET to create Web Parts for asynchronous post pack. Beginning with WSS 3.0 SP1 and MOSS 2007 SP1, developers can create custom Web Parts using AJAX.

As
we’re getting closer to release, Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 is
returning to how it was previously available to Windows Server 2008
customers.Specifically, we are going back to
making it available as a separate download that is available to
customers at no additional charge.This is how Windows SharePoint Services was available to Windows Server 2003 customers (pre-R2).With
the beta and RC0 versions of Windows Server 2008, we offered it in the
Windows Server 2008 software. Starting with RC1 and going forward,
Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 will have to be downloaded separately.
Basically, we made this decision to allow customers to most
conveniently obtain the technology while allowing Microsoft to have
flexibility in the Windows SharePoint Services development process.If you have not looked at WSS 3.0, be sure to download it and peek around.It
offers great collaboration, social computing and document management
features and provides a rich composite application development platform
based on our .NET technologies.The SharePoint
team is working hard on great new features and releases that customers
will continue to see delivered via download. For more guidance re: installation/evaluation updates, see: http://download.microsoft.com/download/b/9/e/b9e27997-7a8e-493c-b23b-58eeaa3214c8/WSSGuide.doc.